So, your email marketing strategy isn’t converting. Not to worry — we’ve got just the thing. We’re going to take a look at three of the most common reasons why email marketing strategies don’t work. By the time we’re done here, you’ll know how to avoid the biggest pitfalls in the email marketing world and be armed with the tools you need to make sure that email marketing strategy actually converts.

It’s Not Targeted Properly

One of the most common threads running through most email marketing strategies that aren’t converting is that they aren’t targeted properly. The real tragedy of this is that email marketing is, for all intents and purposes, designed to be one of the most effective methods of targeted marketing.

With email marketing, you’re able to control exactly who sees a specific email by segmenting your leads based on their status in the sales funnel, location, demographic, etc. If you’re not taking advantage of those tools at your disposal, you’re missing out on a massive chunk of email marketing’s potential.

So, how do you go about fixing that? Start by understanding your audience. While there are plenty of auxiliary reasons why marketing campaigns fail, the root cause of their failure is usually linked to businesses not realizing that the message they were putting out wasn’t relevant to their audience.

For a business to understand their audience, they need to not only recognize the needs of their general email list but also identify the needs of each individual group within that list. Never forget that any two people looking to purchase one of your products/services are likely to be at different stages in the sales funnel.

After each email marketing campaign ends, take some time to review the metrics and continue to segment your list into more specific groups. From there, send more targeted emails, build more trust with your subscribers, increase traffic and conversions and…well, you get the idea.

You’re Not Sending The Right Amount

While the issue of targeting is certainly common, it’s far from the only issue plaguing most email marketing campaigns. It’s safe to say that one of the easiest ways to ensure that someone unsubscribes from your email list is by sending them too many emails. The modern consumer values their personal spaces, and you’d better believe that their email is pretty personal.

The last thing anyone wants is to have notifications going off every day for the same business. Aside from being excessive, it ends up just getting in the way, which is exactly what you want to avoid when promoting your business.

But that being said, it’s a delicate balance. After all, if you don’t send enough emails, the lack of constant communication can lead to a lack of interest from your audience. The concept of using email marketing as a brand awareness tool isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but it’s worth noting having an email list and refusing to use it regularly defeats the purpose of having it at all.

So, either extreme ends up being a recipe for disaster. The real question is, “what’s the email sweet spot?” Typically, the first email of your marketing campaign is going to attract the highest read rate, even though the individual read rates may end up rising to some degree in future emails.

But the more emails you send, the higher your unsubscribe rate will be. By the time you’ve sent your sixth email, roughly half of your mailing list will have opened one of your emails, and one in eight of them will have clicked on a link. That’s why your best bet will be sending out an email every two weeks, to help nurture those leads, without giving anyone a reason to unsubscribe.

It’s Not The Right Length

This is actually an issue that most businesses are aware they struggle with. And with good reason, because it’s a bit of a tricky subject. For plenty of marketers, email marketing is one of the last bastions of long-form content. The logic here is that because you’re not playing by ‘social media rules,’ you don’t have to worry about cutting the message down to its bare components.

On the other hand, it’s safe to say that we’re all living in a social media world, and ignoring the fact that long-form content simply doesn’t have the widespread appeal that short-form does would be naive.

The modern consumer accesses their email through their smartphones. The good news is that this ensures your audience will get their emails faster and check them more quickly. The bad news is that this means that, whether you like it or not, you’ll need to keep your message as concise as possible.

A good rule of thumb? If the reader doesn’t know what the email is about 10 seconds into reading it, you need to cut down the fluff.

What obstacles do you feel your business is up against when it comes to email marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments.

Very insightful post about email Marketing Campaign. There have been some very interesting points you have highlighted, especially about the length of the email. . I am certainly bookmarking this page and sharing it with my colleges at Span Global Services, before the next email campaign. Thank You